


like heroes we thought we had to be

by Frea_O



Category: Chuck (TV), Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: Big Box Music Store, Chuck AU, Comment Fic, F/M, Gen, Intersect, Spies, The Boss - Freeform, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <i>Chuck</i> AU where Jesse gets an Intersect, and Beca is Sarah.</p><p>Don’t freak out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like heroes we thought we had to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [earnmysong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnmysong/gifts).



The information doesn’t come to him in flashes of light, but of sound, old pop ballads and scores from movies that sit, half-remembered, forever at the edges of his consciousness. Sometimes it’s the Boss. He’ll hear a lick of screaming guitar and like that, he knows that the man two places ahead of him in line at Starbucks is a person of interest for train bombings in Paris in 1997.

It’s not painful; it’s just weird. Things have been strange since his friend Chloe sent him that bootleg of Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, which is okay. His life is usually boring. Not bad boring, he can admit, just complacent boring.

Except for right now. Right now is awesome.

“Oh, c’mon, what’s your favorite movie?” he asks Beca, who’s strolling along the quad beside him, her hands tucked into the pockets of skinny jeans that he had thought only hipsters could pull off. Beca’s way out of his league. She’s got a punk rock thing going on, and when she strolled up to the counter at FYE where he was putting in yet another mind-numbing eight-hour shift, he wasn’t even sure she was talking to him. If he could have do-overs, he certainly wouldn’t have been singing show-tunes to Benji when she’d walked up. But it hadn’t even fazed her. One smile and now here he is on the first date he’s been on in years.

“I…would rather poke myself in the eye with a stick?” Beca asks.

He frankly can’t believe it. 

“Or get dental surgery,” Beca says.

Not having a favorite movie is like not having a favorite Beatle. “How can you not have a favorite movie?”

“Easily?”

“That’s un-American. No, that’s wrong. That’s un-human.”

Beca shoves him. For somebody so tiny, she’s got a lot of upper body strength. “All right, patriot, what’s your favorite movie?”

“That’s such an unfair question.”

“You just asked me that very same question!”

“I’d need a top five at least,” Jesse says, giving her a pious look. She wrinkles her nose at him, and it’s the gosh-darned cutest thing he’s ever seen.

Except two things happen: Jesse hears an accented voice (Brazilian? South American, at the least) and then the Boss’s hot guitar kicks in, telling him that there’s a terrorist not four feet away from him. And Beca goes still from top to toe, one hand clamping down hard on his forearm.

Jesse’s all for first-date contact, but this seems a little urgent. He’s also used to being the needy one in the relationship. Maybe this is a red flag, but he’s more concerned with the terrorist and _why he knows there’s a terrorist near him_.

“Uh, Jesse,” Beca says, “I don’t want to alarm you, but we need to go. Right now.”

“Go where,” Jesse starts to say. Before he can get the second syllable out, Beca yanks on his arm—God, she’s so strong—and they’re running across the courtyard together. Well, Beca is running. Jesse is stumbling and trying to keep up. When he looks over his shoulder, expecting for something like the Joker or at least Doctor Octopus to be chasing him, there’s nothing but other students milling about. 

He doesn’t spot the people racing toward them until he looks again, and then he does a double-take that nearly trips him up. Those are people in G-men suits, being led by a woman with hair the color of a flame and the most determined look he’s ever seen on her face. Are they chasing him? Or Beca? Is Beca some kind of felon? Bruce Springsteen stays quiet on the matter, but those look like government types. “Who is that?” Jesse asks as they careen around a corner and sprint on. “Why is that woman chasing us?”

“She’s not a woman, she’s Aubrey Posen, and she’s the NSA’s greatest burnout since…well, ever.” Beca yanks him into an alley and for a moment of bliss and confusion, he trips up and stumbles into her. They hit the wall, every line perfectly pressed together, and Jesse’s brain gets a little foggy despite the chase and the adrenaline and the weird flashes he’s been hearing. For a split-second, he swears he can see the surprise and desire he’s feeling mirrored in her eyes. The moment breaks because Beca shoves him bodily away and behind her. “There’s no way we can outrun her. Do you trust me, Jesse?”

Trust her? He doesn’t even know her, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to say exactly that, but she meets his eyes again.

He can’t do anything but nod, dumbly.

“Good,” she says. 

She pulls out a gun and turns to face the mouth of the alley, where the NSA goons are surely about to arrive.

Jesse swallows hard and does the only thing he can. He looks down at himself, at the gun in his date’s hands, at his date herself, and says, “Don’t freak out.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for magisterequitum's [AU Comment Ficathon](http://magisterequitum.livejournal.com/548649.html).


End file.
